21st Century Business Skills Go Way Beyond Finance

The world has changed not only for CEOs but for people who are coming into business for the first time. And the kinds of skills and the kinds of thinking that are crucial for MBA students or people entering the workforce are the ability to see across different issues.

It’s not enough just to understand finance, you have to understand what the human rights community thinks. It’s not enough just to be an engineer understanding how to get oil out of the ground, you have to understand the way communities will relate to the company that wants to get the oil out of the ground. So business has become a really interesting and diverse and cross-disciplinary activity in a way that’s never been true before.

And so for people entering the workforce today what’s most important is to be able to see across a lot of different issues and not just focus within a single area of expertise. I think that presents one of the most interesting opportunities and makes business one of the most interesting places to be in the 21st Century because of all of the change and all of the cross-thinking that’s taking place.